For decades, subliminal messaging – the art of sending someone a message that influences the recipient even though they do not perceive it consciously – has been a hot potato for marketers. Research – most research – indicated that it worked. But advertisers didn’t want to admit they used it as a marketing tactic, which just made consumers more and more suspicious that advertising was being deployed to unwittingly manipulate their minds.

Now, in the 2020s, with the topic of attention front-and-center in the advertising industry, it’s worth revisiting the concept. Sure, subliminal advertising works in theory. But:

• Is it still as effective in today’s world of always-on messaging?
• Is it ethical to grab consumers’ attention when they aren’t even aware of it?

Let’s backtrack a bit. Subliminal advertising was a hot potato the minute it first surfaced in the late 1950s. With consumers uncomfortable with the idea they were being influenced subconsciously by marketers, advertising and manipulation became synonymous in the public’s mind. It was the Cold War, after all, and there was a general fear of brainwashing, spying and the invasion of privacy.

Despite consumer fears and distaste, in 1958 the Advertising Research Foundation issued a report entitled, “The Application of Subliminal Perception in Advertising,” which concluded that in certain instances human subjects are capable of responding to stimuli which are so weak in intensity, duration, size or clarity, that they are not consciously aware of them. Around the same time, Vance Packard published his highly influential book, “The Hidden Persuaders,” claiming that consumers “are being monitored, managed, and manipulated outside our conscious awareness by advertisers.”

But even half a century later, subliminal messaging was still a bogeyman. In the 2000s, a TV viewer triggered a media frenzy when they spotted what they believed to be a subliminal message embedded in the Food Network TV show “Iron Chef.” When a particular clip of the show was slowed down and viewed frame by frame, a McDonald’s logo appeared for 1/30th of a second. Barbara Lippert, former columnist for Adweek, explained it as “a flash frame that came up at the wrong time.” A spokesperson for the Food Network argued that it was “a technical error…definitely not a subliminal message!” McDonald’s issued the statement, “we don’t do subliminal advertising.”

The debate has long gone unsettled, as there was scarce evidence of subliminal advertising driving brand outcomes – in part because virtually no agency or advertiser was willing to admit that it engaged in the practice. Nonetheless, instances like these fed the idea that subliminal ads are happening beneath the level of real, attentive consciousness.

But consider this: a lot of advertising is processed subliminally, whether it’s intended to contain a hidden message or not. Ross Wilhelm, a prolific marketing professor at the University of Michigan from the 60s through the 80s, argued that every time we drive past a billboard we likely receive a subliminal suggestion. Each time we flip through a magazine we probably receive subliminal messages from ads we aren’t really paying attention to. And when we flip past a TV channel during a commercial break, we are probably receiving subliminal reminders. In lieu of his position, the impact of social media, feeds, reels and the like probably fit the bill too.

All these exposures beneath the surface may have a true impact. Conventional neuroscience suggests our subconsciousness takes in millions of bits of information simultaneously, while our consciousness can only deal with many magnitudes less – a few dozen bits at a time. There’s a lot of information we’re taking in and processing without consciously knowing it.

Here’s the problem today. Consumers see so many ads, at such a constant pace, that the ability to absorb a message is hampered by just how many other messages are bombarding them at the same time. So even if subliminal advertising works – and even if it works well – the landscape has changed. Metaphorically, there isn’t just one McDonald’s logo flashing in the background of our lives. That McDonald’s logo is contending with dozens, even hundreds of other brand messages that may flash by our eyes in a given minute.

But there’s more that we can learn here. What if the decades-long revulsion to the idea of subliminal advertising isn’t really rooted in Cold War-era paranoia, but in the fact that humans inherently prefer to be in control of what they process?

Infillion published a report earlier this year that walked through the spectrum of attention, proving that business outcomes for brands are strongest when consumers pay attention willingly, interact with the brand, and receive something in exchange. This type of attention, which we call “experiential attention,” seems like it would be the opposite of subliminal advertising. But it’s more complex than that. Subliminal messages lie in murky waters, stuck in limbo somewhere between disruption and continuity. They’re not nearly as annoying as a sudden pop-up ad when you’re in the middle of reading a news article. You may willingly and innocently glance at a logo, perhaps even lingering on it, totally oblivious to that logo’s ulterior motives.

For example, fast food chains often use red and yellow in their branding, because these colors are known to stimulate appetite and energy. Is that message of “Get hungry!” a true “disruption” if the consumer isn’t consciously aware that their brain is being bombarded with that signal? Probably not. But is it the most effective way to drive customer loyalty? Definitely not.

Tricking consumers into paying attention to an ad just isn’t a great look for a brand. While logo tricks are quick and fun, when it comes to genuine brand-building, “honest people don’t hide their deeds,” to quote Emily Bronte in Wuthering Heights. Impactful treatment by brands comes from messaging that is delivered with real conscious attention, across meaningful time durations, in uncontroversial, privacy-compliant ways.

Want to learn more about ads that get people to pay meaningful attention? Check out our TrueX Engagement Showcase here.

There’s a famous old saying in our industry that says, “Half my advertising spend is wasted; the trouble is, I don’t know which half.” It’s typically attributed to one of a handful of midcentury advertising titans – but fittingly, it’s unclear who actually said it, if anyone ever did.

That’s a far cry from today’s advertising landscape, where digital ads can be deployed with peak efficiency and tracked precisely from targeting to post-campaign measurement. You, as a marketer, know exactly which of your ads worked, and if they didn’t, what you can do to fix them.

The problem is that this efficiency has come at a tremendous cost both in terms of finances and labor. One estimate found that the average enterprise uses an average of 120 marketing technology tools. That’s a lot of software subscriptions to pay for, a lot of employees who need to be trained to use them, and a lot of headaches when one piece of software doesn’t “talk” to another. Marketers find their media dreams restricted by budget, logistics, and a lack of interoperability. The seemingly infinite possibilities of digital marketing suddenly become a lot less promising, especially as marketers find it even more difficult to balance the need to build a brand with the imperative to drive sales in the short term. Our ads are efficient – but are they effective?

At Advertising Week New York 2024, Infillion chief growth officer Laurel Rossi moderated a panel that addressed this topic, called “Consumers Have Infinite Media Choices. Why Don’t Advertisers?” She was joined by David Rusli, chief strategy officer of Wavemaker; Jinu Peyeti, senior director of audience, insights, and measurement at Albertsons Media Collective; Jatinder Singh, global head of data and AI at Accenture Song; and Amanda DeVito, chief marketing officer at Butler/Till.

“Paradoxes have driven this business for as long as I’ve been in it,” Rossi said. “Brand versus demand. Efficiency versus effectiveness.” So, she asked the panelists, what do they do to address it?

“I think the challenge we all face is that efficiency without effectiveness is like hitting a bullseye on the wrong target, and effectiveness without efficiency is like watching the most incredible fireworks show you’ve ever seen and knowing that it’s going to fizzle out because you don’t have the resources,” Amanda DeVito said. “I love programmatic, I love being able to hyper-target, I love data driven strategy – I love all that, especially coming from a media perspective, but I think we have to balance that with brand health.”

Jatinder Singh said that marketers need to start from the middle, describing the gulf between pure brand advertising and performance-driven programmatic ads as “these beautiful things that nobody sees [and] these ugly things that everybody sees.”

Being selective with the right technology vendors is key. “For me, the technology is the enabler and obviously we will work with our clients to ensure that we partner with the right ecosystem partners to put the right infrastructure and operations in place,” Singh said. “We no longer have the false binary of ‘I need to build a brand’ or ‘I need to build an ad.’ We need to do both.”

Coming from the retail media side of the business – a sector that has been rapidly adding even more tools and options for marketers – Jinu Peyeti recognizes the complexity afoot. “Figuring out what works for your business takes a lot longer than it should…We need to build an ecosystem, platforms, tools, technologies that reduce the cost of testing and get us to a point where all of our media is measured on incrementally and that is when we’re going to know what really works,” she said. “I would seek out vendors that are solving a problem that I am already currently facing. I will not just listen to vendor pitches without knowing what the problem is that it will solve for me.”

In other words, Peyeti phrased it hypothetically: “I have these problems that I’m trying to solve. How can I solve it with maximum integration and minimum number of new vendors? How does this fit into my long term technology stack and plan?”

David Rusli suggested that this can be achieved by asking the question of not just what a vendor can to do target or measure, but how that targeting or measurement can, in addition, serve the broader purpose of building a brand. “I think there’s no point of adding new tech or new tools just for the sake of adding new stuff. In fact, what we really really need is one holistic platform that connects all this different tech, all these different tools,” he said. By cutting down on the red tape and added logistics, marketers can then free up some energy to focus on the bigger picture. “We are here to build long lasting brands and to do that effectiveness has to be our number one source of truth.”

Interested in simplifying your marketing tech stack? Infillion’s team would love to chat with you.